Authors: Alafair Burke
B
ut my neighbor is taking me to Small Claims Court. He claims that Peanut scratched up his front door, but Peanut is innocent. Who is going to represent me? Who is going to represent
Peanut
?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but the district attorney’s office does not defend either individuals or dogs in private, civil matters. Wait. What’s that in your bag? Is that Peanut? You can’t be having a dog in here, sir.”
The receptionist on the fifteenth floor of the courthouse clearly had her hands full. She waved Ellie and Rogan back to Max’s office.
“Hey, you.” He stood to give her a kiss, but she turned her cheek. Even if only in front of Rogan, it seemed inappropriate to share PDA with an assistant district attorney in his office.
Rogan apparently noticed the exchange. “Damn, Hatcher. You’re cold.”
Max offered Rogan a handshake. “About time someone took my side. Turns out it’s your lucky day, guys. Social Circle was pretty cooperative, as far as these Web companies go. We weren’t gonna get the IP addresses for every comment posted without a fight, but we settled on the ones that were obviously threatening.”
All Rogan had to hear was the word
fight
, followed by
settled
, to protest. “That’s some bullshit—”
So much for the male bonding. “Rogan, do you currently know
anything
about the origin of the other threats on the website? And do you actually
need
information about the other comments? Because, you know, if tracking down the identity of the Illinois housewife who posted ‘
You go, girl’
three weeks ago is essential to the investigation, then by all means, I’ll drag Social Circle into court.”
Rogan brushed a nonexistent piece of lint from his suit lapel and looked directly at Ellie. “I do believe someone has picked up on your tone.”
Ellie flashed a proud smile. “I think that means we’ll take what we can get for now.”
“That’s what I figured. Here’s the deal: the blog’s been up for about seven months. Pretty typical traffic initially for an amateur blog—meaning, zilch. But she kept at it, and apparently people started to find her and to comment. Other bloggers started to cross-link to her site. That all leads more people to the blog. Anyway, she was up to more than ten thousand hits after five months. Twenty thousand as of last week.”
Ellie couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to read someone else’s self-analysis. “Seriously? Reading all that therapy-lite garbage made my head hurt.”
“But get this: since that first threat was posted Saturday night, traffic has skyrocketed. Yesterday, she had seventy thousand hits. The commenters talk more about the threats than her actual posts.”
“Adrienne gave us some mumbo jumbo about wanting her readers to see how people try to silence survivors. She never mentioned it had also been good for business.”
“Very good, in fact. But now let’s get down to brass tacks.
Where
did these posts come from? We already suspected that the post on Saturday night came from Julia’s laptop. Sure enough, the IP info for that comment comes back to her computer, just as we expected.”
“And the rest?” Ellie asked.
“That’s where things get pretty interesting. The other comments all originated from Manhattan, but not from Julia’s computer. We’ve got a couple that came from Equinox gym by Union Square. Another gym on the Upper West Side. Apple Store in the Meatpacking District. Whoever’s doing this hides their tracks pretty well.”
Rogan sighed. “We can take the times of the posts at each place and see if we get lucky with video.”
“But to what end?” Ellie asked. “We still don’t even know that Julia Whitmire was murdered, and we certainly don’t know there’s any connection between her death and these comments. After getting a feel for the kinds of kids who go to Casden, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of those brats somehow found out about Adrienne’s website and decided to screw with their friend’s mom. Julia might not have even known that someone used her computer.”
Rogan’s phone buzzed at his waist. He held up a finger and excused himself to the hallway.
Ellie plopped down in Max’s chair and stretched her legs out. “Seriously, Max, you should’ve seen this Casden School.” Like her, Max was strictly a public school kid. “Creepy headmaster more concerned with secrecy than education. Spoiled sociopaths drugged up by parents too busy to notice their kids are little monsters.”
“Tell me how you really feel.”
“Trust me, it’s worse than I can even make it sound. After a day on the Upper East Side, even Bill Whitmire doesn’t look so bad. Thank God I’ll never have to deal with any of that stuff.”
“Public schools for the next generation, too, huh?”
“More like the miracle of birth control.”
“Ah, for now, but what about when that biological clock starts ticking?”
“For now and forever. Or I guess until menopause. Then it’s hot flashes, a hairy upper lip, and—oh yeah—still no kids.”
“That’s not funny, Ellie.”
“I’m not trying to be funny. Okay, maybe a little, with the hair thing, but—”
“But someday—”
“No. No someday. No clock. Clock never ticked, never will tick.” She heard Rogan’s voice in the hallway, and then lowered her own. “I mean, you
have
met me, right?”
Max let out a huff. “Are you kidding me with this?”
“Of course not. You knew that.”
“Um, I think that’s the kind of thing I would have noticed. We’ve been dating for a year.”
“Plus two and a half weeks,” she corrected. She remembered the timing of their first date, because one night later she killed a man. She and Max had celebrated their one-year anniversary by going back to the same restaurant of that first meal.
“And this is how you tell me you’re not interested in children? When you’re venting about yet another run-in you’ve had with people you’ve deemed not quite as morally good as you? Really nice, Ellie.”
“Now who’s the one not being so nice?”
“Isn’t this the kind of thing normal people work out together? Don’t normal people talk about these things and negotiate?”
She swiveled in his chair, fiddling with the documents from Social Circle. “Fine, then, I’m not normal, because, as far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing to negotiate. It’s not like there’s a split of opinion about one kid or three, like we’d meet in the middle at two or something. I can’t have half a baby. It’s a totally different life, and one I’m not at all interested in.”
“You could have told me that.”
“And you could have told me you were all into the idea of babies and diapers and playdates and the exhaustion of having a whole other human being need every ounce of your energy every single day. I just assumed we were on the same page on this.”
“Well, we’re not.”
She heard Rogan saying goodbye to whoever was on the phone. “Can we please talk about this later?” she said.
Max nodded, but in that moment it was clear something had shifted. Since their very first conversation, she had wanted to see only what they shared: commitment to the job, dark humor, and a certain matter-of-factness about life. She had been so proud of herself that, for once, she was in a relationship in which she emphasized only those attributes she should cherish.
But now, with this one grudging nod, an agreement to postpone this conversation, Max was focusing on what separated them—him, so close to his devoted and adorable parents; her, with the dead dad and screwed-up mom. He was looking at her and feeling the yawning absence of the next Donovan generation.
She reached for his hand, but then Rogan walked in, slamming the door shut behind him. “Tracking down our cyber-stalker is going to have to wait.”
“What’s up?” she asked.
“So we knew a fat reward offer from Julia’s parents would bring out the crazies?”
She looked at her watch. “Don’t tell me we’re already being inundated.”
“I wouldn’t say inundated. Not yet, at least. But I just got a call from Tucker.” Their lieutenant didn’t make a habit of tracking them down when they were out in the field. “Bill Whitmire called the commissioner himself. He’s got a witness at their house.”
“Who?”
“No clue, but he told the commissioner she’s already getting squirrely. The Lou said we better get there before she bails, unless we want the wrath of the Whitmires crashing down on us.”
“So the witness is there right now?”
“Yes,
now
. Damn,” he said, looking at Max. “I swear, sometimes she intentionally doesn’t listen to anything she doesn’t want to hear.”
Max didn’t meet Ellie’s eye as she walked out the door.
B
ill Whitmire was smoking a cigarette on the front steps of his townhouse. “Detectives, thank you for coming.”
“I didn’t get the impression we had much choice in the matter.” It was the kind of comment she had learned by now not to make, but her mind was still back in Max’s office, and she’d had about enough of these people. She’d grown up collecting albums by bands this man had made. But every piece of evidence showed that Whitmire was a crappy father, and now he was trying to make up for it by using his influence to control their investigation. “Where is this alleged witness?”
“There are two, actually. Right inside.” He used the handrail to help him stand. “My wife tried to tell you from the very beginning this wasn’t self-inflicted—”
“And we
are
treating this case as a homicide, Mr. Whitmire.”
Against my best instincts
, she wanted to add. “We’ve been following all relevant leads. In fact, we’ve found some information on your daughter’s computer that we’d like to talk to you about.”
“Okay, that’s fine. But talk to these two people first. My wife told you she thought it had something to do with those strange kids she found here with Julia. And now it turns out she’s right.”
“You already
interviewed
these witnesses?” she asked. “We assumed you were simply collecting information from the tip line to pass on to us. Even
that
goes far beyond the typical involvement of private parties in a criminal investigation.”
“My intention was to do this the right way.” The front door cracked open and Katherine Whitmire stuck her head out, but her husband didn’t bother to pause. “We hired Earl Gundley’s firm. He served his full twenty-two years of service. The plan was for him to handle it all just like he would have as a cop, but with full-time attention to only one case. But then these two showed up, right at our doorstep, ready to talk.”
“Then you should have sent them directly to the precinct,” Rogan said.
“I told you it was a bad idea, Bill.” The flat, quiet voice did not belong to the same bossy woman who had met them at the door yesterday morning. The spark was gone. Ellie suspected a pharmaceutical influence.
Bill Whitmire had enough energy for both of them. “Did you really expect us to wait? We didn’t want to lose them. We had to act fast. Even after they talked to us, it was hard enough to convince them to cooperate with the police. We had to promise to give them ten thousand dollars of the reward money now, just to get them to stay until your arrival.”
Terrific. Now it looked like straight-out bribery.
Rogan jumped in before she raised the confrontation level even further. “Look, what’s done is done. Let’s hear what they have to say, and we’ll take it from there.”
“I can live with that.” Whitmire held the front door open, then followed them into the foyer. “They say they know who killed our daughter. They say it was some girl who tells everyone she’s a boy. She goes by the name of Casey. Casey Heinz.”
J
immy Grisco took another look at the schedule he’d picked up at the Buffalo Greyhound station.
Packing was easy enough. His uncle’d thrown him out two weeks earlier. Grisco didn’t mind. He’d already stayed two weeks longer than the month he’d initially been promised.
Jimmy lugged the same duffel bag out of this shithole that he’d carried into it, holding all the same familiar clothes, plus the Adidas shoe box containing all the old letters.
He took one last look around the motel room before shutting the door behind him. There was an 11 p.m. bus leaving that night. He’d be at the Port Authority Bus Terminal by 6:30 the next morning.
Casey
T
he boy and girl waiting for them in the Whitmire living room looked like forgotten children.
The girl’s long, sandy, blond hair had matted into unkempt dreadlocks. Her already ruddy skin was further marred by acne. Ellie couldn’t even tell what the male sitting next to the girl actually looked like beneath all the self-imposed ugliness. All she saw above his long, pointy beard were the nickel-size discs stretching his earlobes like plates, a silver bar piercing the cartilage of his nose, and a tattoo of a green bar code on his left cheek. Maybe she was just too old, or midwestern, but she’d never understand how these kids who couldn’t afford food or a roof over their heads always seemed to have enough dough for another tat.
Bill Whitmire was about to join his wife on a narrow upholstered banquette in the corner of the living room, but Ellie stopped him.
“I think under the circumstances we’ll stick to the convention of speaking to these two alone, if it’s all the same to you, sir.” It was bad enough that the couple had gotten to the kids before the police. They didn’t need to exacerbate the appearance of special treatment by allowing Julia’s parents to sit in on a witness interview.
The Whitmires vanished up the townhouse’s winding staircase. If they could have politely taken their pristine furniture with them, they surely would have done so. The kids smelled as if they hadn’t bathed in days, maybe weeks.
Ellie chose the farthest seat from them, the same corner bench the Whitmires had just vacated. Rogan remained standing at the edge of the foyer, but wasted no time getting down to business.
“How about we start with names.”
The two kids just looked at each other.
“All right,” Rogan said, pretending to head for the stairs. “I’m sure we can have the DA persuade the Whitmires not to give one penny to you guys.”
The boy spoke up first. “Brandon. And Vonda.”
“For ten grand, I think we’ll need last names, guys.”
“Sykes. Brandon Sykes.” Brandon made sure to add enough sullenness to his tone to register his resentment.
“And how about you, Vonda?”
She sat there with crossed arms. These two were real cheerleader types.
“It’s Vonda Smith. Scout’s honor.” She held up three fingers, which struck Ellie as somehow different from whatever she’d done as a childhood pledge, but she wasn’t about to start an argument.
Vonda and Brandon. The two kids Casey mentioned when Ellie asked him about that day Katherine Whitmire came home to find them at the townhouse with Julia.
“The Whitmires say you have information about their daughter’s death,” Rogan said. “The medical examiner’s preliminary findings indicate suicide.”
“That’s not what we hear,” Vonda said.
“That’s the funny thing about gossip,” Rogan said. “It’s not always reliable, especially when it’s swirling around the homeless kid community with the promise of a hundred grand coming down the pike.”
“It’s not gossip.” Brandon’s voice jumped an octave and echoed in the high-ceilinged room. The shift from withdrawn to angry was immediate. “Casey told us what happened.”
“That’s Casey Heinz?” Rogan clarified.
“Yeah. You know he’s not a boy, right? She just pretends she is. Total fucking freak.”
This, from Tattoo Face. Ellie shook her head. “Casey said you guys were his friends. In fact, he stuck up for you when I told him that Julia’s mom was sure you guys had something to do with her death.”
“He probably didn’t want to be on our bad side. He knows we know he did it. He told us all about it.”
“Told you what?” Ellie asked.
“That he killed Julia.”
“And when did he supposedly say this?”
“Last night,” the boy said, “at the park. We saw him at the park.”
“Casey said they got into a fight about Ramona and he just snapped,” Vonda said. “Then he started crying like the girl he is, saying he wished he hadn’t done it.”
“If someone killed Julia, they went to great lengths to make it look like a suicide. I don’t think it
just happened.
” Ellie was careful not to reveal any details about the way Julia died or the appearance at the scene, but she wanted them to know that she and Rogan—unlike the Whitmires—weren’t going to swallow down every word they said. “How exactly did Casey say the killing happened?”
“Casey. Didn’t. Say.” Brandon mimicked sign language with his words. They’d obviously expected this to be easier. “It’s like he regretted saying anything to us, and so he stopped talking about it. We asked him more about what happened, but he just kept bawling like a little bitch baby.”
“And why would he and Julia have a fight about Ramona?”
“Because Casey’s totally obsessed with Ramona,” Vonda said. “He thinks Ramona’s eventually going to love him back, like he’s a real dude or something. It’s pathetic, but that’s the truth. You should see the way he looks at her. Then you’d know what we mean.”
Ellie recalled the way Casey had talked about Ramona Langston, like she was an angel.
“If you ask me,” Brandon said, “that fight probably had something to do with him hooking up with Julia.”
“You just said Casey’s obsessed with Ramona,” Rogan said. “Now you’re claiming he was with Julia?”
“Yeah, man. He’s totally into Ramona, but she’s, like, platonic or whatever, like Casey’s a girlfriend or something. But Julia, she’d try anything once, you know? Maybe she was gonna tell Ramona about it. Blow Casey’s chances forever.”
If Casey did have a physical relationship with Julia, then he had lied to her and Rogan. She didn’t want to believe Casey had actually confessed to these kids, but they also couldn’t ignore that kind of lie.
She continued to press. “And so after Casey told you he killed a girl, you did nothing until you heard about this reward?”
“Casey’s our friend, okay?” he said.
“A friend that you just referred to as a, quote, total fucking freak.”
The kid looked down at his hands and scraped some dirt from beneath his nails. “I feel bad. But, yeah, we could use the money.”
“It doesn’t mean we’re lying,” Vonda added.
“Then you won’t mind if we talk to you separately.” Ellie noticed the two exchange glances as Vonda followed Rogan into an office adjoining the sitting room.
Once she and Brandon were alone, she switched gears. Every instinct told her these kids were only here for the money, but unless one of them admitted they were lying, Julia’s parents were going to believe what they wanted to believe. Maybe if she could connect with this kid, she’d have a better shot at getting him to come clean.
“Where are you from?”
“Roseburg, Oregon. I started out in Portland. Some girl told me it was better here, so I took a bus eight months ago.”
“How’d you get the money?”
“I told some church I was heading to New York to go live with my parents. They handed me a ticket, and now, here I am.”
“Is it better?”
“Nope. Guess it would be if I was living in a place like this. But, nope. The panhandling’s better, but, you know, the cops mess with us more. And winter was colder than shit.”
Ellie resisted the temptation to explain that shit wasn’t especially cold.
“What was so bad about Roseburg?”
“Nothing, until my stepdad went medieval on me for cutting class.”
“Just how medieval?”
“Broke my left arm pretty good.”
“Seems like an overreaction.”
“Yeah, well, when a school social worker did a little unannounced pop-in on a Wednesday morning while he was cooking meth in the garage—my stepdad didn’t seem to think it was an overreaction.”
“And your mom?”
“Doesn’t matter. She got sick of dealing with me a long time ago. I’m now what you call
emancipated
. That means I’m legally responsible for myself.”
“That must have been hard.”
“Whatever. They don’t require a license for parents. Did Casey tell you about his family? They sent him to some brainwashing camp where a supposed counselor tried to rape him back into being a girl.”
“You say Casey’s a freak but I notice you refer to him as
him
, not
her
.” Ellie had heard enough about gender identity to correct Rogan’s initial use of feminine pronouns, but she had to admit, the preferred terminology did require conscious effort. “I know what you’re doing. You actually accept Casey at heart, but you want to make him sound troubled enough to do something like kill Julia.”
“And I know what
you’re
doing. I don’t need your friendship.”
“And I don’t need two selfish kids who would lie to churches for bus money taking advantage of these grieving parents. This isn’t a joke, Brandon. You may not have given a shit about a rich girl like Julia, but she’s dead. You may want us to believe that Casey killed her, but I could just as easily tell her parents up there that you and Vonda are making up this story to cover your own asses.”
“Cover our asses for what?”
“For killing their daughter.”
Beneath the tattoos and piercings, the color dropped from his face. “But—that—no, no way, lady. I
knew
we should’ve bailed. I
knew
the cops wouldn’t listen to us.”
“Tell me the truth and I’ll listen plenty.”
His moment of panic passed. The next time he spoke, the stammer was gone. “Point the finger at us all you want, but we’re not the ones who were messing around with Julia. Or have a key to this place.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Casey may not have given us a play-by-play of what he did to Julia, but we are telling you the truth. You’re right. He is my friend. And, yeah, me and Vonda are only here because of the money. But Casey said he killed Julia. And he—not us—could have gotten in here to do it. Julia gave him a key to this place when they hooked up. Why don’t you ask him about that?”
Ellie was starting to worry about the growing contradictions between Brandon’s statements and the impression Casey had created. First the hookup with Julia. Now a key. If Casey had access to the townhouse, he had access to Julia. And her computer. He could also be the one posting the threats on Adrienne’s blog.
“What did Casey think about Ramona’s family?”
Brandon chuckled. “You mean his future in-laws?”
“Casey loves Ramona that much, huh?”
“Totally. He’d fucking
die
for that girl, you know? But her parents? He thought they were spoiled pricks.”
“Why was that?”
“Because they are.”
“You know them?”
“The type. Sure.” He looked around his current, opulent surroundings as if the decor explained his point.
“Did he ever say anything specific about her parents?”
“Not really. Just that he’d gone over there once and could tell they were eyeballing him. You know, like something wasn’t right.”
She still didn’t believe Casey confessed a murder to these two kids, but parts of Brandon’s story had the ring of truth to them. She realized now that her compassion for Casey’s personal situation had caused her to give him too quick a pass. She should have done a more thorough interview while she’d had him at the park.
Brandon stared at his crossed feet. When he looked up, Ellie saw a surprising softness in his expression. “Like I said, Casey’s my friend.” Ellie forced herself to remember he was only sixteen years old and had lived a young life so horrible that his current existence—alone on the streets of New York City—was an improvement.
“So when do we get our money?”
And, just like that, the moment of sympathy passed.